“This infernal couple”: fidelity and The Seagull

 

“This infernal couple”: fidelity and The Seagull

Meghan Miraglia

This week, both Patrice Pavis and Jeremy Tiang addressed issues of fidelity in translating and performing dramatic texts.

Tiang’s lecture, which opened with various translations of an opening scene from a Chekov play, hinges on the idea that translation merely perpetuates hierarchies of power instead of giving voices to those not typically in the Anglophone world. He describes a phenomenon in which celebrity playwrights are given trots from translators – and while the celebrity playwright’s name is almost certainly on the script, playbill, and other promotional materials, the translator is often rendered invisible.

This trend, Tiang claims, results in a hegemony of the English language. A powerful few are given the “spotlight” (forgive me!), and that powerful few dictate how English is used. As a result, boundary-pushing “play” with language is limited to those who have built enough clout to “earn” the privilege to do so. New translators seeking to question and experiment with English are not afforded the opportunity to do so, and any attempts, it seems, are viewed as too niche or fringe to be “popular” or consumable for/by the masses (I should add – I would totally be in the Twitch stream for the Sims version of Chekov’s The Seagull. I thought that was sick).

I quite liked Tiang’s Meryl Streep metaphor – she has a distinct voice for each character she plays, and yet, that voice is still her own. She finds new modulations and versions to animate the text and performance, but it still comes from her. Tiang applies this to translation, arguing that translators do the same. It is a “creative response” that does not seek to dominate the original, but rather, create a situation “where my own artistic sensibilities can harmonize with the original” and something is produced that contains both the translator/original.

Pavis proposes a similar thesis as Tiang, writing that “the relationship of text to performance” is a “Western obsession [that] never ceases to torment us” (117). The relationship becomes less of a relationship in the true sense and instead becomes a “hierarchy” in which “this infernal couple” engages in a perpetual power struggle. Fidelity, Pavis argues, furthers the claim that there is one “correct reading, a reading that reveals a verifiable truth in the play or the interpreted work” (119). In other words, fidelity is at complete odds with Beichman’s fan metaphor. The West is obsessed with binaries and singularities: black-and-white thinking, “one right answer.” Pavis is right: “[t]his desire for coherence, for verification, validation and fidelity, runs very deep” (124).

I can't turn off my interdisciplinary thinking, so you'll have to forgive the diversion. This idea comes up in education, too. Often, students and teachers alike get so hung up on the idea of cracking a text's "meaning", that the art of the text is completely lost. Reading becomes a game, one in which we play to "win". We "win" by finding the author's hidden message, and we argue over which interpretation is right, for there can only be one correct answer. It kills any ounce of fun, curiosity, and joy in the classroom. It feels the same in translation - the joy comes when we wade in the possibilities and the potential of a text. In a way, it also feels massively disrespectful to the author, as if to say that we believe they are only capable of writing a one-dimensional text. 

I like the idea of focusing on dramaturgy to highlight “the potentiality of the text” (121) rather than becoming trapped in a false notion of singularity. Through “‘open, patient and informed reading’” (Lallias qtd. by Pavis, 121), we may be able to avoid the anxiety of believing there is only “one way” to read/perform a text.